


Scars

by usuallyfunctioning



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Scars, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 05:42:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11845122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usuallyfunctioning/pseuds/usuallyfunctioning
Summary: A scene in which Sherlock and John skirt the edges of what happened when Sherlock was away, confronting truths that neither can easily admit.When he spoke, Sherlock’s voice was a breath. “I thought about you often, when it was happening.”“I thought about you when you were gone,” John murmured.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Just getting this out of my system. Hope you enjoy.

John saw them first on a Saturday afternoon.

Sherlock was standing next to the kitchen table, lab set up around him, when John walked into 221B. Sherlock looked up and flashed him a brilliant smile, catching John off guard—John who had gotten used to a quiet and sullen Sherlock since his return after the fall. 

On this afternoon, Sherlock was animated and giddy, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. John couldn’t recall the last time he had seen Sherlock so excited.

“Remember last night, John?” he fired, hands busy with the microscope in front of him.

“Well, yes,” John started. “It was the dead woman at the club. She—“

“Right,” Sherlock said, and turned to grab something from the counter behind him. He swung back around with an empty beer bottle in his hand. “And this,” he began, “this was our suspect’s. I was able to find trace materials on it that have remnants of both the poison and the drug.”

John raised an amused eyebrow, noticing how Sherlock quite resembled a puppy at the moment. “So there were drugs involved?”

“The interesting thing,” Sherlock continued, sifting through a stack of petri dishes and scribbled data. “The interesting thing is that this is the same drug we found on the bouncer, and now if I can just get the victim’s purse from Goffried—“

“Gottfried?” John interrupted.

Sherlock didn’t look up from what he was digging through. “I know his name begins with a G.”

“You mean Greg. Lestrade.” John laughed. 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I was saying, we only need to get her purse and we can tell if the drug was ever in her possession before she was killed.”

“So this is why you’re so excited all of a sudden,” John said, corner of his mouth tilting upward. “It isn’t decent.”

Sherlocks eyes were alight, and the afternoon sun filtered through the flat’s windows, warming the room in a comfortable glow.

“It’s gotten so much more interesting than just a murder, John.” The detective turned back to the counter, still digging through the stacks of paper—John didn’t know what for. 

“Just a murder,” John mused, eyes crinkling in a soft smile he saved just for Sherlock.

“How was your, uh, your lunch with Mark?” Sherlock asked. 

“Mike?”

“Right, Mike, how was that?”

John, again, was thrown for a loop. He didn’t remember telling Sherlock about the lunch, or maybe he just hadn’t expected Sherlock to retain any of their mundane conversation. 

“It was… yeah, it was good to catch up,” he said.

“And… Mary? She’s well?”

“Yeah, she is,” John responded, just as Sherlock said “Aha!” and lifted his phone from under a small pile of scribbled-on papers.

Sherlock only half-turned, reaching his arm out behind him while staying focused on the paper before him. “Could you text Scotland Yard for me?” he asked. “Tell them we need the victim’s purse. It’s small, and I doubt it has a shoulder strap. They’ll have it.” 

John reached for the phone, and his eyes caught on a raised, rough band of pink skin that stuck out against the detective’s pale wrist. He noticed a trail of harsh, round marks that made their way up the soft skin of his arm. 

John hesitated just long enough for Sherlock to turn his head and look at him, look down at his outstretched hand, and press his lips into a firm line.

John, gentle, took the phone from Sherlock’s hand and looked up at the man before him. Sherlock turned quickly back to fumbling with lab apparatus and began explaining how he had found the suspect’s beer bottle, talking at a pace just seconds faster than usual. 

He rolled his sleeves back down his forearms as subtly as possible, but John noticed, and he watched Sherlock fidget his white shirt back into place around his wrists. The detective rambled on.

“Sherlock,” John said. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock quieted, still looking intently down at his experiment.

John cleared his throat. “What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Playing stupid doesn’t suit you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock straightened, looking up at John, missing the something he had been filled with moments ago. Missing the fervor he’d been alight with. “You’re talking about my wrists.”

John nodded once.

Sherlock turned the corner of lips up, rueful, and said lightly, “You’re a doctor, John. Playing stupid doesn’t suit you.” He rubbed one hand absently around the other.

Yes, John could tell what had happened. Rough scars circled both of Sherlock’s wrists, abrasive cuts and raw skin that had gotten infected—a product of restraints, crude and dirty metal digging into delicate wrists with a heavy edge. The spotted markings that trailed his forearms, those were cigarette burns. 

John coughed, pulled his lips together, shifted on his feet. “Scars, then… and how’d you get them?” John asked, voice tight. He bit the inside of his cheek. “I mean, they’re relatively new, obviously.”

Sherlock leaned back, resting against the counter behind him. “Surely you’ve deduced it, John.”

“Alright,” John said. “I—um… well, restraints,” he cleared his throat, “and burns. They were… purposeful.” He said it, and he couldn’t meet Sherlock’s eyes.

“Moriarty’s men. I’d found myself in compromising positions over the past few years while dismantling his network.”

John’s head jerked up to look at Sherlock, voice sturdy. “Compromising positions? You mean you were tortured.”

Sherlock maintained his now-neutral demeanor, looked at John, said, “Yes, I guess you could call it that.”

John laughed, harsh and disbelieving. “I guess you could call it that,” he muttered under his breath. “Is that all?”

“You want to… talk about it,” Sherlock speculated, eyes calculating.

“Of course I bloody want to talk about it! It’s been months since you were gone, Sherlock, and still I’ve had no idea you went through—through anything like that. I thought…“

“…you thought?”

“I thought—I had this image of you running around Europe, around the whole damned world; you with your, your bloody coat, taking down terrorists with your cleverness, alright? I had no idea…” John’s voice dimmed.

Sherlock’s lips became a humourless smile, and his voice was soft but detached. “It’s not your fault, John.”

And John said again, pained, “I had no idea.” His eyes met Sherlock’s from where he was standing across the kitchen.

John rocked forward on his feet, walked around the table between them, and took one of Sherlock’s hands in his own. Sherlock watched him carefully, face expressionless, and John’s deft doctor’s fingers traced the marred skin of the detective’s pale wrist. 

He imagined Sherlock roughed up and on his knees, arms spread wide, chained in each direction. He imagined blood trailing from Sherlock’s wrists down his arms, down his body. He imagined Sherlock’s captors: brutish, burly men with sinister faces, faces that laughed as they pressed their burning cigarettes to Sherlock’s skin and laughed as Sherlock tried not to hiss through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Sherlock responded, “It’s not your fault.”

“…what else?” asked John.

“Why?”

“Because I need to know.” John’s voice was a low and crackling whisper.

Sherlock lifted his hands from John’s and began unbuttoning his white shirt. John watched, not knowing what he was feeling. Shame, maybe. Guilt or sorrow.

When Sherlock reached the last button, he walked around the room, slid his shirt from his shoulders, and set it, folded neatly, on the back of a kitchen chair. He stood there for a minute, facing away from John and waiting.

John, from where he stood, couldn’t help his sharp intake of breath. More dark cigarette burns littered Sherlock’s frame. A raised, red scar adorned his left shoulder blade: a massive, ragged cut that had been left to infection. Fine white lines were painted across his entire back, and it took John a moment to realize they were scars from a whip. They glinted in the window’s light.

John walked over to the detective, who didn’t react to John’s footfalls. The martyr who stood, turned away, as still as a statue.

He raised the calloused fingertips of his right hand, pressed a thumb gently to Sherlock’s back, and began to trace his scars. Sherlock flinched, but, after a second, leaned slowly and cat-like into John’s touch. He pressed his palms onto the back of the chair that sat before him.

When he spoke, Sherlock’s voice was a breath, but it seemed to echo through the room’s silence. “I thought about you.”

John’s hand stilled and then continued across Sherlock’s back.

“Often,” Sherlock continued. “When it was happening.”

“I thought about you when you were gone,” John murmured. He lifted his left hand and set it, warm, against the bare skin of Sherlock’s side. He could feel the man’s ribs under his palm.

“I had hoped you might.”

John could feel Sherlock’s lungs expand with each slow breath. He imagined he could feel the blood running beneath his skin. “I still do,” John breathed. “Think of you.”

Sherlock was silent but for the soft sounds of his inhale, his exhale.

John’s left hand slid from Sherlock side and across his torso to rest at his chest. His right hand wrapped around Sherlock’s stomach. John pressed his forehead to Sherlock’s back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trembling.

An _“I forgive you,”_ rested wistfully on Sherlock’s parted lips.


End file.
